Writing in Biology

The instructor came around to give each of us an object that he said was harmless, so already I was alarmed. He then came around and passed out jello shot cups with spiders inside of them. Luckily, I got a small one that was not yet on the move. The girl to my right requested a larger one, that dude was freaky. So sat inside of my jello cup was a little spider that was a golden brown color throughout the majority of it's body and he had 8 legs, I'm not actually sure if it was male or female though. However, he had 8 long spindly legs that each contained two joints, creating three segments. At each bend in the leg was a little white spot that was sandwiched by two black dots on either side. The remainder of the leg was the same golden brown color that matched the rest of the spider. The body of the spider was about the size of a grain of  rice, and all the legs emerged from the smaller segment of the body, leaving a larger portion of the body that looked almost like a tail. On this portion of the spider was a darker brown, almost black spot on the top of the spider, the underneath matched the rest of the spider. The two front legs were the longest and seemed to be used mostly for the spider to get a sense of his whereabouts. He seems to have individual control of each leg and moves them all independently, almost as if each leg has it's own specific job/purpose, which it might. I don't know much about spiders really so I'm unsure of their functions. He moved a lot throughout the cup but often just stayed still, overall not a very active spider. 

The dainty arachnid fits easily into the small plastic container. I am not sure what the species of spider it is, but it seems to very clearly be a spider due to it's physical characteristics. One of the main characteristics that identifies this as a spider is the fact that it has eight legs, a feature that applies to many arachnids. It rarely stops moving however it does stay motionless on its webbing which it seamlessly builds at the top of the container via its lower abdomen where it ejects a silky substance. The spider sits on the webbing in a stationary manner to most likely assist in its hunting efforts, so as not to disturb potential prey. Physically the spider’s legs are a reddish brown color that each has three to four dark brown spots in nearly the exact same order. The spider’s body is a dark brown bordering on black with several speckles on its back that are a white-yellow color. The speckles are very orderly and move down the spiders abdomen in a vertical direction, they have an almost diamond shape. Its two front legs seem to be the longest and most mobile reaching out when the spider is in motion. Has two joints on each leg, and has speckles on the underbelly of its abdomen.

The spider was a yellowish, brown color and had long, pointy legs. The spider had a small body, the size of a sunflower seed, with legs extending far beyond itself.The spider has two small, black dots for eye. There are sall black colorations at it's joints in it's legs. The spider seemed to move around aimlessly, looking for an escape. It layed next to the carcus of it's previous meal. No webs were visible. It's movements were rapid and difficult to follow. The spider would shrivle up when it would fail attrying to move and escape. It's legs bent high over it's body. When the spider was not moving, it would seem unbalanced and easy to tip when the container was tilted. It had eight legs. The spider has small follicles of hair on all of it's legs. It's two front legs were longer than the rest. The spider has two joints in each leg. The spider has a white dot on it's rear end. The spider's underbelly is transparent.
 

This spider has a white body about the size of my pencil lead tip and is still in the web it has created. Its legs are very thin and translucent but appear transparent because of their width. The spider has now moved out of the side of the cup into the base and looks tan in color now. Body and legs, this spider is about the size of my thumbnail. It appears calm in its place in the web. It has eight legs, but its front two legs appear to be stretched out further into the web. When I move the cup around, the spider moves its legs but then calms down after the movement has stopped. The spider also appears to have two legs bent underneath it. It seems to be sensitive to disturbances as it mved when I picked the cup up ever so slightly. Its legs have three "sections" and appear to have two points in which they bend. They first rise above the body, outwards, and then down towards the body again. When I flip the cup upside down, the spider crawls up part of its seemingly invisible web towards the top of the cup. It remains stationary in its web like before once it reaches the top.

The spider's body doesn't touch the ground when it's stationary on its legs. One of the legs is pointed upwards, almost as if it is trying to sense the environment. It is hard to tell where the web starts and ends. As I turn the cup to flip it over the spider remains in its place, but it appears to be on the cup before the cup is flipped and not in its web. It is quite possible the web permeates throughout the cup. This could give us clues as to how long the spider was in the cup. It is impossible to tell if the spider has been making the web all along as I write since the web is invisible. I accidentally bumped the cup and sent the spider into a frenzy. It has calmed down now.
 

           At first glance, the spider presented to me in the plastic cup appeared to be a "daddy-long-legs," but after further observations I'm not so sure what it is. As all spiders do, this one has eight legs. However, the front two legs on either side of the spider are longer than the remaining six. The spider seems to uses these legs the most and appears to feel its way around the cup using its two front legs. The torso ove the spider is mostly off-grey with black flecks on its back. The under belly is a transleucent, almost whiteish color from head to trunk. When looking at the spider's head, there are two small mandibles with what look like little hands above them. these "hands" are constantly running over the mandibles like the spider is wiping its mouth. From what I can see, there are only 4 eyes on this spiders head. As far as behavior, the spider appears to be pretty docile.When i lift the cup, all movement stops completely until I place the spider back onto the desk. This behavior lasted a few minutes until the spider began to spin a web. Once this happened, the behavior became frantic and its legs were moving wildy back and forth all around the cup.

This specimen seems to be a male cellar spider. I think it is a male because it has huge pedipalps, most commonly found in male arachnids. Its pedipalps are about the same size as its cephalothorax, and they are transparent.

It is difficult to see the complete set of eyes of this spider, but it seems to have two tiny principal eyes, also known as AME's (anterior medial eyes) and two pairs of bigger eyes located to the sides of the AME's.

The whole body of the spider is about the size of my thumbnail, which maybe around 1 cm more or less. The color of the body, disregarding the cephalothorax which is translucid, seems to be grey and it might be just because it is transparent as well and the organs are showing.

We are observing spiders in class and each student has their own spider to observe and right about. My spider has long, thin legs that appear to be a tanish color. The legs also have a black slash, white slash, then another black slash on each joint. I counted 16 joints total, each leg having 2 joints each. When I pick up the container, the spider moves around much more than when I sit it down. After the spider moves around, it always seems to go back to hanging upside down from the cap of the container. The second segment of the spider is much bigger than the first segment. The first segment is a tanish color and us where all the legs attach to. The second segment is a similar tanish color but has darker markings on it. At the very end of the second segment, there is a black dot. At the front of the second segment, there are white dots on either side of it. I wonder what these dots are and what purpose they serve. In the container I also see what looks like the remains of a web. The front two legs look like they are longer than the other legs. The longer legs also seems to have a lot more movement. The spider is not moving as much as it was originally. When I pick up the container, the spider tries to move to remain upside down. It was periodically walking around the container and it looked like it might have been working on forming a web.

Sat inside the cup is a spider. The spider has a gray body which is about 1/3 the length of one leg. The spider has a brown head and legs. It acts very still as it is in a very small plastic container, A slight tap on the desk causes the spider to become more lively. As it starts to move around the cup I notice that its walking pattern seems off. The spider seems to favor walking on his left side. Upon further investigation I realize this is due to injury of one if the spider's legs. The leg of the spider must've fallen off during transportaion. Each leg of the spider is made up of three segments. Between the segment closest to the body and the middle segement is a joint. These joints are the highest part of the spider when sitting flat on the lid. The joints are also the second darkest part of the spider after it's head. As the spider crawls to the top of the plastic cup it brings all of it legs towards the center of it's body and looks as if it is hanging by only one single point.

The spider observed has a light brown exterior with slightly darker appendages. The spider including its appendages, is about the size of a quarter with the legs making up most of the area.  The legs of the spider appear to be about the thickness of a piece of average hair. The abdomen of the spider is slightly darker than the head which is a light brown that is almost white. Where the appendage bends, there are areas which appear to be slightly darker or slightly lighter.  The appendage bends 3 times before reaching the end. The legs form a trapezoid like shape and then bend slightly away from the body about a millimeter before the end of the leg to form what appears to be used for balance. The spider does not appear to have good balance as it tilted with the cup when it was moved.  The cup contained what appears to be the beginning of a web with small, white, tubular, thin filaments. The spider moved from the bottom of the cup to the top when flipped around. When hanging “upside down” the body does not make contact with the cup and the spider seems to be sticking to the “ceiling” of the cup with just its legs.  A few white/ light brown dots are observed in the cup.